MrsDoF and D.A.R.E.

Get a cop into the classroom, push the teacher and any parents out, and start telling grade school kids stuff about drugs. Presto! A drug-free youth culture.

Well, it probably made sense to somebody, sometime. Not necessarily to MrsDoF, who was recently asked for a donation to keep the D.A.R.E. program going in our schools. It seems that the program is running out of money, and her response was Farewell and good riddance.

I wondered about “no teacher in the room”, too. I don’t remember being asked to leave. I imagine that varies from district to district, as well as from instructor to instructor. D.A.R.E. went through lots of changes as I remember. We had our officer in all classrooms once a month for awhile and then the program concentrated only on fifth and sixth grades.

I agree with Dave that being a good cop does not necessarily make someone a good teacher. The students at my school, loved the Officer and really loved the souped up special D.A.R.E. car that he drove. Never thought about who paid for it or why it was important. I suppose it was a form of advertixing.

Our youngest son says he remembers the officer encouraging students to talk about stuff they might see at home, such as a bong (I think that’s a pipe for smoking marijuana).
Using the innocence of youngsters for hints about where to send patrol cars…..

The D.A.R.E. car in our community had been seized during a drug bust, then refurbished, proper lettering on the doors.
It sends the message that getting arrested for drugs can be quite expensive in several ways.

The programs I went through, roughly 15 years ago was a joke. Most of us kids made fun of the whole thing. We were treated like morons. We already knew what drugs were and all they were telling us was that it’s illegal and dangerous.

Got news for you cop, kids aint stupid! We know when an adult is bull****ing us and we can see right through it. The problem with DARE is it treats kids like morons instead of telling them the truth. Because someone thinks that telling kids the truth about sex and drugs will lead to crack babies…

DARE to me is just another waste of tax dollars when there are much more prudent issues to fix with that money.

No D.A.R.E. program when I went to school in the 1970s. We received a really good drug education in 8th grade science class. Thanks to that experience, I had a list of drugs to avoid because of side effects and addictive properties. Many of those drugs, like Heroin and Amphetomines, saw a resurgence in popularity in the 80s and 90s. I guess the program they ran at my school was “too controversial” for not harping on the legal issues, or maybe just because it worked to a degree. The only joke in the program was a propaganda film against marijuana. They kept drawing comparisons between the intoxicating effects and cigarettes, and avoiding the obvious comparison to alcohol. Like web05 said, kids can smell bull excrement a mile off.